China says a high-ranking U.S. delegation will travel to Beijing next week to resume negotiations aimed at resolving the ongoing trade war between the world’s two leading economies.

Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng announced Thursday that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will visit the Chinese capital next Thursday and Friday, March 28 & 29, followed by a trip to Washington in early April by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.

The trade war between the United States and China began last year when President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports to compel Beijing to change its trading practices.

China has retaliated with its own tariff increases on $110 billion of U.S. exports. The Trump administration is also pushing China to end its practice of forcing U.S. companies to transfer their technology advances to Chinese firms.

Trump had initially imposed a deadline of March 2 for both sides to reach a deal before imposing a hike in tariffs from 10 to 25 percent, but delayed the increase late last month citing “substantial progress” in the negotiations. But Chinese President Xi Jinping has reportedly cancelled tentative plans to visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida next month to sign a final deal, a sign that the talks have stalled.

Trump issued a warning Wednesday that U.S. tariffs could remain in place for a “substantial period” to ensure that Beijing lives up to any agreement.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen left Thursday on a tour of diplomatic allies in the Pacific that will end with a stopover in Hawaii.

Taiwan has struggled to shore up its dwindling roster of allies as countries are choosing instead to establish relations with Beijing, which considers the self-governing island part of Chinese territory.

The agency said she will transit through Hawaii on March 27 on her way back from the Marshall Islands, but did not give further details.

Only 17 mainly small, developing countries still recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. The island split from mainland China amid a civil war in 1949. Beijing has recently ratcheted up its rhetoric around “re-unifying” democratically governed Taiwan with Communist Party-ruled mainland China.

China is particularly sensitive to cooperation between Taiwan and the U.S. When the latter approved the sale of $330 million of military equipment to Taiwan last September, China warned of “severe damage” to bilateral relations.

Ahead of a similar stopover in Hawaii in 2017, China demanded that the U.S. bar Tsai from transiting through in order to “avoid sending any erroneous messages to the Taiwan independence force.” …

It was just after midnight March 24, 1989, when an Exxon Shipping Co. tanker ran aground outside the town of Valdez, Alaska, spewing millions of gallons of thick, toxic crude oil into the pristine Prince William Sound.

The world watched the aftermath unfold: scores of herring, sea otters and birds soaked in oil, and hundreds of miles of shoreline polluted. Commercial fishermen in the area saw their careers hit bottom.

It’s been 30 years since the disaster, at the time the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Only the 2010 Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has eclipsed it.

The 986-foot (300-meter) Exxon Valdez tanker was bound for California when it struck Alaska’s Bligh Reef at 12:04 a.m. It spilled 11 million gallons (42 million liters) of crude oil, which storms and currents smeared across 1,300 miles (2,092 million kilometers) of shoreline.

The oil also extensively fouled spawning habitat in Prince William Sound for herring and pink salmon, two of its most important commercial fish species.

Fishermen and others affected by the spill dealt with ruined livelihoods, broken marriages and suicides. Exxon compensation checks, minus what fishermen earned on spill work, arrived too late for many.

Most of the affected species have recovered, but the spill led to wide-scale changes in the oil industry. Today, North Slope oil must be transported in double-hull tankers, which must be escorted by two tugs. Radar monitors the vessel’s position as well as that of icebergs. …

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are vowing to counter what they call Iran’s aggression in the Middle East.

“We need to increase it, we need to expand it, and together the United States and Israel are working in close coordination to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and around the world,” Netanyahu said Wednesday, noting U.S. pressure on Iran is already having an impact.

He made the comments after regional security talks with Pompeo, who arrived in Israel from Kuwait earlier in the day.

During Wednesday’s talks, Netanyahu and Pompeo emphasized the closeness of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and vowed to deter Iranian threats to Israel. Both leaders also announced President Donald Trump will host Netanyahu at the White House next week.

The Israeli prime minister thanked the U.S. secretary of state for the Trump administration’s support for Israel and the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, calling the decision “historic.”

Pompeo noted what he called threats toward Israel from Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei.

“The Ayatollah has declared that the annihilation and destruction of Israel is his primary goal,” Pompeo said. “With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparalleled commitment to Israel’s security and firmly support your right to defend yourself.”

The top U.S. diplomat also said the Trump administration is dedicated to combating anti-Semitism, and hatred and bigotry in all forms.

“With the dark wave of anti-Semitism rising in Europe and in the United States, all nations, especially those in the West, must go to the barricades against bigotry,” Pompeo said.

On Thursday, the secretary said he and his wife will visit the newly-opened U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, as well as historic and holy sites in the city.

Netanyahu’s government is headed to a tough April 9 re-election contest as the prime minister is embroiled in a corruption investigation and facing allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Pompeo, in comments to reporters on route to the Middle East, dismissed the suggestion that his meeting with Netanyahu could be seen as the United States intruding in the Israeli election in support of Netanyahu.

A senior State Department official said last week that Pompeo would not be meeting with Netanyahu’s opponents, but Netanyahu alone as the current head of the Israeli government.

Pompeo, speaking while traveling to the region, said the recent U.S. shift away from terminology describing the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights as “Israeli-occupied” to that of “controlled” by the Jewish state was not accidental. He said that the characterization in a recent State Department report on human rights around the world about Israeli control of the disputed territories “was a factual statement about how we observe the situation. And we think it’s very accurate, and we stand behind it.”

From Israel, Pompeo will travel to his third and final stop on his Middle East trip, Beirut, Lebanon.

“We’ll spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present to them,” Pompeo said.

The United States considers Hezbollah, a militant Islamist political group, as a pro-Iranian “terrorist” organization, even though it is represented in the coalition government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a U.S. ally. …

U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his feud Wednesday with the spouse of one of his top aides, Kellyanne Conway, calling George Conway “a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!”

Trump later described Conway as a “whack job.”

Trump attacked George Conway for the second day in a row after the conservative Republican lawyer and critic of the president suggested that Trump is increasingly mentally impaired.

“George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted,” as a top-level Justice Department official, Trump claimed on Twitter.

Within 20 minutes, Conway responded with an acerbic tweet of his own, telling Trump, “You seem determined to prove my point. Good for you!,” adding, “#NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder.”

In a followup tweet, Conway told Trump: “You. Are. Nuts.”

Questioned about Conway as he left for the midwestern state of Ohio to visit a manufacturing plant, Trump told reporters, “He’s a whack job. I think he’s doing a tremendous disservice to his wife. She’s a wonderful woman.”

Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with the political news site Politico, defended Trump’s attacks on her husband.

“You think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder?” the presidential adviser said. “You think he should just take that sitting down?”

“Don’t play psychiatrist any more than George should be,” she added. “You’re not a psychiatrist and he’s not, respectfully.”

Conway, who on occasion has represented Trump in legal transactions, said Tuesday he decided not to take the position Trump offered him, as head of the civil division in the Justice Department, after Trump attacked top officials at the agency and fired James Comey, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Conway has been a frequent critic of the president, co-founding Checks and Balances, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who have attacked Trump for the way he has handled legal and political situations during his 26-month presidency.

Conway is without qualifications in psychology.

But on Sunday, as Trump vented his wrath at a variety of targets in a hail of Twitter comments, Conway cited the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to claim that the president embodies “a grandiose sense of self-importance,” is “pre-occupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance” and shows signs of “irritability and aggressiveness.”

“His condition is getting worse,” Conway said.

His wife, a fixture on U.S. news shows defending Trump and by now accustomed to her husband’s months of taunts against the president, dismissed his armchair assessment of Trump’s mental stability.

“No, I don’t share those concerns,” she said Monday.

But the feud between George Conway and the president first ratcheted up Tuesday when Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said on Twitter that Trump “turned down Mr. Kellyanne Conway for a job he desperately wanted. He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didn’t want the scrutiny?”

He added, “Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success,” claiming that Trump “doesn’t even know him!” The couple, however, has attended black tie events together with Trump.

Within minutes of Trump’s comment, George Conway replied, “Congratulations! You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!”

The president’s doctor, after examining Trump last month, said he is healthy although overweight.

“I am happy to announce the president of the United States is in very good health and I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency, and beyond,” White House doctor Sean Conley said.

Trump’s assessment of his key aide’s spouse was once decidedly more favorable.

The Washington Post published a 2006 letter, a decade before Trump ran for the presidency, in which Trump, then a real estate mogul, praised George Conway for his work representing him in a dispute with tenants at his Trump World Tower condominium in New York.

“I want to thank you for your wonderful assistance in ridding Trump World Tower of some very bad people,” Trump wrote Conway. “What I was most impressed with was how quickly you were able to comprehend a very bad situation.”

Conway, 55, and Kellyanne Conway, 52, married in 2001 and have four children together.

Conway told one interviewer last year that he knows his wife does not appreciate his barbed comments about her boss, the president.

“But I’ve told her, I don’t like the administration, so it’s even,” he said. …

President Donald Trump’s youngest child, Barron, turned 13 on Wednesday, the first day of spring break at the Maryland private school where he’s a seventh-grader.

Barron and his mother, Melania Trump, are keeping to tradition and spending the break at their Palm Beach, Florida, home.

The Republican president was in Washington with plans for a trip to Ohio later Wednesday.

There’s no word on plans for a birthday celebration for Barron, whose full name is Barron William Trump. But the first lady tweeted a photo of a gold-tone Mylar balloon in the shape of “13” and a caption that said “Happy Birthday BWT” followed by three hearts.

President Barack Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, also turned 13 in the White House.